Guarantees
by stranger12
Summary: [Post London Has Fallen] What if Mike failed?


**London Has Fallen – Guarantees**

What if Mike failed?

* * *

Connor wouldn't stop clutching to him and sobbing. Mike held him close as his fellow Secret Service agents milled around them, all too alert after the recent events in London.

"Mike" – one of his colleagues said softly, but Connor just held on tighter.

"I'm sorry, I–" – he shook his head, unable to leave Connor alone for even a moment. The other agent nodded understandingly. Mike knew he would eventually have to let the kid go, they would both have to go their different ways, but for the time being, they needed each other.

They stayed there for something close to an eternity, until Mike couldn't physically do it anymore, and Connor seemed to finally have ran out of tears, though when he separated from Mike, his face was swollen, red, and the grief, pain, regret and anger in his eyes were far too clear. Mike wished he could hug it all away, but he knew that it was all a part of Connor now, just like it was a part of him.

It just seemed so unfair that a child would have to carry the burden of death, and be presented with it at every turn when someone wanted to be cruel – and Mike knew well enough how cruel the world could be, and what shitty people populated it.

"You call me anytime, okay? Anytime. Day and night, I don't care, just call me" – Mike made Connor promise before he was spirited away to live with his grandparents. The boy– The young man, because despite his young age, he had nearly seen his mother die in a snowy road, and then had to see his father– Connor had survived losing both his parents, and Mike didn't know how he could be so strong as to keep his head up high in the face of an uncertain future.

"Take care, Mike" – Connor said, and it was a stab to the gut how like his father he sounded, quietly reassuring and commanding.

One day, if Connor so wished, he would be a leader of men, just like his father had been.

Had been. Was. Dead.

* * *

Mike quit the Secret Service.

Newly minted President Allan Trumbull tried to change his mind, stating that without him, Ben and Lynne would have died long before they did, Lynne was outside of his control, and he had done everything he possibly could to save Ben – but Mike was only human, and he should not blame himself for not single handedly rescuing Ben.

Leah told him the same, especially during the nights where he stayed up late not because of their daughter, but because of the shadows lurking in his nightmares. She tried to kiss him and tell him it wasn't his fault, Ben wouldn't blame him, Connor didn't blame him. What he didn't tell Trumbull or Leah though was that he blamed himself, and that was too much to face most days, not to mention nights, when he felt like he was back in London, lurking in corners, fighting for his life, for Ben, for Connor, for America.

It was his fault, he had failed, Ben was dead, Connor was an orphan, Lynne was dead, and he couldn't possibly face being a Secret Service agent again, pretending he could protect people when everyone could look up the video of Ben's last moments to know how bad Mike was at his primary function.

* * *

Afterwards, Mike decided he was done with getting paid to have people's backs. Leah looked conflicted about it, because if anyone in the world knew how committed he was to being a protector, it was her, but she knew he needed a change, she understood that whatever had happened in London with Ben (which he had still not been able to tell her the details of) had scarred in a way that nothing else had, not choosing to save Ben over his wife, not the attack on White House.

As much as Leah had never shot anyone, stuck a knife into someone and tortured them for information, she had lost countless victims, and she got that.

But she could never understand the rage, the shock, the utter loss when Mike could do nothing but watch as Ben closed his eyes just before he lost his head. The fury with which Mike slaughtered Ben's killers was something he had never felt in his life, and as he stood over their broken bodies afterwards, he couldn't believe he had been such a monster.

The people who'd killed the leaders of the world, who'd killed Ben in front of the world, were monsters, but Mike couldn't quite allot himself into too different a box than them.

* * *

Little Lynne was the only thing that kept Mike sane most days. Connor called him everyday, he wrote him letters and e–mails, but he was off in Illinois with what was left of his family, trying to adjust to a world without either of his parents, where terrorists weren't men in masks plotting to spread fear, where they were his father's ruthless killers instead. Connor was coping, and Mike was sure eventually he would forget all about him, but Lynne? Lynne was his baby, Leah and Lynne were now his sole charges, so to speak.

"Mike? Babe, come to bed" – Leah sleepily called out from the door. He glanced at her and nodded vaguely.

"Sorry, go to sleep, I'll be a minute" – she looked at him but said nothing.

He wondered if he would be able to hang on to Leah, to Lynne, to his sanity. He had not been able to save Ben, and some nights when he closed his eyes, he saw it happen again and again, though the worst were when Ben turned around and yelled at Mike, blaming him for the entire situation.

No wonder Leah didn't want to fight him anymore on his depression, he was sure he'd scared her plenty of times when he woke up screaming each and every time Ben screamed at him in his nightmares.

"I'm sorry" – he said into the night.

The night didn't respond.


End file.
